Letting Go
by Steaming Teapot
Summary: Ginny can't let go of the memories of Tom Riddle. What will happen when he returns? (Draco Malfoy will later get a bigger part.) Please read.


Disclaimer: Everything you recognise is JK Rowling's. I don't own anything, so please don't sue me. I have nothing worth of value except my ElfQuest comic books, and I wouldn't give those up for a hundred million dollars. 

A/N: My second try on angst/romance/action/adventure and I truly hope that you'll like it. This will hopefully turn into a D/G romance (NO FLUFF) and perhaps I will mix some of the other characters too, though that's not likely.

It will centre mostly around Ginny and will be written from Ginny's point of view, but I might write something from Draco's point of view also, but I find him very hard to keep in character when I write his thoughts so don't hope for much.

Oh, and one itzy bitzy thing. About the voices at the end of this chapter, I mean no offence by them.

I am serious, they are inside my head and I can't get them out. If anyone is offended then send me a mail, don't write it in a review and I shall stop. (Maybe…)

I don't have a beta-reader right now and I am not from an English speaking country so please forgive and forget any spelling and/or grammar mistakes. Thank you for reading this, and without further ado, here is the story.

~*~

Letting Go

~*~ 

Ginny Weasley let the tears flow down her cheeks without even bothering to try and get them away. It wouldn't help, no matter what she did. They kept falling like a rainstorm every time.

She sat in her dorm looking out over the grounds of Hogwarts, which was now flooding over by the rain that refused to stop. It had been like this the last two days and no students were allowed to go outside.

She shuddered as she felt the feeling of someone's cold hand touching her spine. The hand wasn't there, she knew that, but all the same she felt it, just as she had during her first year. He was coming for her again. She wiggled a bit to get the feeling away, but it only turned worse as the hand moved upwards to her neck.

"Stop it, please…" she sobbed. But it didn't stop. The hand moved towards her throat and Ginny started hitting herself and jumping up and down to get it away. "STOP IT! GO AWAY!"

Immediately, the hand disappeared and left her with the cold feeling of dread that someone might have heard her screaming. 

She waited a few minutes, but no sound of someone running up the stairs could be heard so she sank down to the floor and lay there gasping for breath.

Why couldn't he just leave her alone? He had done enough harm to her already! Not one night since her first year had she slept peacefully, not ONE night.

And now she was in her sixth year at this school.

Standing up and walking over to the bathroom she shared with the other three girls she sat down in front of the mirror.

Her reflection stared back at her. 

She looked dreadful. 

After he regained power two years before, Ginny Weasley had turned into a living corpse, hardly eating or sleeping.

Her first year at Hogwarts had been both the best and the worst in her life.

The best because she had had a friend, the worst because… she had had a friend. The kind of a friend she couldn't speak of to anyone, the kind of a friend that gave her comfort, solitude from the rest of the world, words of advice and a shoulder too lean on. 

The kind of a friend that took over her whole being and made her do things she didn't want to do. Then Harry had murdered him, leaving her family thinking she was happy about it. They didn't understand, she wasn't happy. She had been even lonelier then, than she had been before. No Diary to talk too.

She missed him and detested him, her single friend. 

But still, his presence was around here twenty four hours a day seven days a week. He was still touching her with his cold, cold hands. That was how it all started. When she had first begun to write in her Diary he had only answered her with his calming words, but then he had started touching her when he grew stronger. He had rubbed her back and stroked her hair… That was the thing she detested him for. Him touching her. The thing she missed about him was the way he comforted her. 

Love and loathing mixed together about him.

Her very own riddle.

Her Tom Riddle.

~*~

In the morning she always got up an hour before the rest of the students so they didn't have to notice her and the little she ate for breakfast she got from the house elves.

During classes she always sat in the far back of the classroom so the teacher wouldn't spot her and ask her questions. It wasn't that she didn't know the answer, her spare time which there was quite a lot of went to reading, and she was far a head of the people in her year. But if the teacher asked her a question the rest of the students would notice her. And she couldn't take that. Not after trying so hard to make them forget. 

She never went to lunch; instead she went to the library to read. No one was there at that time of day and she could find a solitary spot and live in the world only she belonged in.

Dinner was her greatest problem. She couldn't escape that. She wasn't trying to starve herself, she was just trying to get as small as possible so people wouldn't see her, but she got hungry. So at dinner she sat at the far end of the table, dreaming of her life and what it might have been like if she lived in another time. That was what she loved the most. 

To live in another time where none of the things that were happening in her time would be a part of her life.

Right now, she was sitting eating dinner with hundreds of floating candles above her and the stormy night ceiling surrounding her. 

She looked over at her brother Ron who was laughing with his two best friends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. It had first astounded Ginny how simple it was to disappear in front of her brother. She thought that that would have been the hardest part, but it wasn't it was the simplest of them all. After some time, she had understood that Ron was living in his own world with Harry an Hermione and no one, not even his only little sister, could brake through the barrier he had put around himself.

It must have been a relief to him when Ginny had stopped bothering him with all those childish thoughts and the stupid crush on his best friend.

Yes, Ginny would admit that she had been in love with The-Boy-Who-Lived for some time, but in the middle of her third year, it had stopped. She just woke up one morning and the feelings for Harry had entirely disappeared.

In a way it had been good to no longer feel bound to him, but it had left her all alone. 

Who said that love weren't a companion, but a grief to carry around when not returned?

She started picking at her food as the depressing thoughts washed over her as they always did. She wanted to be left alone, but she also wanted someone to talk too. 

Her eyes dwelled up with tears as her heart clenched at the thought of Tom. She missed him. Oh, by Merlin's beard how she missed talking to him.

~*~

The first day of the second week at Hogwarts was awful for Ginny.

Draco Malfoy, the stupid bastard, had come up to her in the middle of two classes when her bag with all her books had split. She sat on the floor trying to pick up all the rolls of parchment, quills, her only bottle of ink etc and he had taunted her about it. 

"Well, it looks as if the littlest Weasley has a few problems here, doesn't it?"

"Sod off, Malfoy. I don't need your help."

"And who said that I was going to help you?"

Ginny could have hit herself for so obviously putting herself into a trap. Just as she was about to pick up her last quill he bent down and grabbed it.

"Oh, my… This was ugly. Please don't tell me that your family doesn't even afford new quills? That is just too pathetic. This looks like it came from your oldest nitwit brother. Bill, isn't that his name? Must say that your parents didn't need to make it all too obvious that you can't afford anything, but to name their son Bill? 

Use an American word for things you can't pay… Very inventive, though."

He threw the quill down to Ginny who was seeing red. 

"Nice to meet you, Weasley." And he walked away.

Then she had been late for MacGonagall's class and she had been forced to sit at the front.

MacGonagall had asked her a few questions that Ginny knew she would be doing since she was stupid enough to be late, but the worst was that she had actually got everything right. Now, MacGonagall was going to keep an eye on her, which would make the students notice her too.

But the worst of all was during dinner. Ginny hadn't even said a word, but suddenly Neville comes up to her and starts to talk as if they were old friends. Yes, Ginny had been his date during his fourth year at the Yuleball, but they hadn't been friends.

Her worst nightmare became reality when the Gryffindor's noticed Ginny Weasley was alive. 

~*~

Finally, after a long week of hiding it was Friday night and Ginny went to bed early and pulled the drapes around her four-poster, not leaving even a speck of light.

It hit her immediately as she put her head on the pillow. The freezing wind that seemed to want to take her whole soul, the cold rasping laughter, the feeling of his hands on her body.

"Come to me, Virginia. Come to me now." She couldn't breathe, she couldn't even think. His hands moved up and down and her muscles clenched. 

"Go away," she whispered harshly. "You're not real! You are not here!"

The cold laughter came again. "Am I not, Virginia? Oh, but you wish me to be here, don't you? I can read your thoughts. You miss me… And I miss you… Let go Virginia, and come with me."

One of his hands moved up her chest and she gasped. "You remember… All those nights ago when I was too weak to not do anything but to touch you. You enjoyed it then. I remember too, Virginia how moaned my name… Say it, Virginia… Say my name!"

She shook her head. "No! You are not here! You are not HERE!"

"Say it, Virginia…!"

"T-… No…" But something compelled her to say his name out loud. "Tom…"

"I knew you remembered me…" Ginny felt something brush her lips and she gasped.

"I'll be waiting…"

And he was gone as quick as he came.

Ginny fought the feeling of needing to empty her stomach… and lost.

She ran to the bathroom and threw up again and again till only the acid in her stomach was left and burned her throat as she threw that up too.

After the ordeal she laid down on the bathroom floor, ignoring the laughter and happy voices from the common room.

He was back. He was doing it to her again… He was making her long for his touch until she couldn't stand it anymore and give in. That was what had happened during her fourth and fifth year when he was back to power. He hadn't done it for some months now, and she had thought that he had forgotten her. Forgotten how she loved him, forgotten how she… she begged for him at the end.

She suddenly felt sick.

Not sick as if she needed to throw up, but sick at the thought of herself. He had touched her whole body without really being there. He had made love to her with his long and abnormal hands while she was still just a child.

Ginny tore off her nightshirt and stepped into the shower and turned it on. As she set it on the warmest water possible she ignored the scolding heat that burned her skin. She had to get him off her. She had to get clean.

She grabbed a scrub and drove it up and down her arms and legs, her stomach and what she could reach of her back.

"I have to get clean," she said to herself calmly. "Clean. Just take a shower and get clean… Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean…"

She scrubbed her right arm till it started bleeding and then she just stared fascinated at the blood that mixed with water and made it rosy.

Slowly, she stepped out of the shower, turned it off and dried herself. A mirror hung opposite her and she saw her naked reflection.

Ginny moved her eyes from her feat, up to her legs and stomach, her chest and then met her own eyes.

"I hate you…"she whispered and threw the scrub she was still holding in her right hand at it so it broke to a thousand pieces. "I hate you…"

~*~

She got out of the common room without anyone noticing her and ran outside. She needed to feel the raindrops on her body, even though it was strictly forbidden to be out.

Thoughts and emotions swam up in her and clouded her vision. She needed to be alone. The thought of people finding her, talking to her made her turn to complete stone inside. She couldn't handle it.

But why? Why couldn't she handle it?

She didn't know. The angst of people knowing who and what she was made her insides freeze. If they knew how ugly she was inside to let him touch her, to make her do things against her will, they would all turn away from her. And that would be worse than being just overlooked.

Ginny shuddered. Not at the cold surrounding her, but from the realisation that when Tom touched her… she enjoyed it.

When she had been fourteen she had willingly let herself get carried away by his fingers that gave her such pleasure. He had never touched her during the holidays when she was home, but when she was at Hogwarts he had always come at night making her long for his touch.

Almost two years he had come and gone, until she woke up one morning and saw the blood on her sheets. He had taken her virginity. How she didn't know, but he had because she had had her period two weeks before. 

The weeks that followed he had not come back, so she wallowed in self-disgust as it dawned on her what she had done and she had tried to forget him. 

Then, a few weeks ago, he had come back. It wasn't much, but from time to time, he had touched her with his hands.

Those cold hands Ginny had at first thought beautiful, but was now spidery and disgusting. She was so scared that the same thing would happen again. That he would take control of her. 

The tears on her cheeks mingled with the rain as something dawned on her. 

She needed Tom Riddle's words and comfort, needed it as food and water. She couldn't survive without it.

But to have it meant that he would take her body as payment…

"Oh, God…" she sobbed and sank to the wet ground. "Help me… Please, help me…"

~*~

This was the first chapter. Oh, and if it is confusing, I'm really sorry. It's very hard to look at something you have made yourself and see the mistakes. I know there is a lot repetition, I will try to change that in the next chapter. 

Be a good reader and review what you think of it? Please?

If I don't get enough reviews I won't continue this story. Usually I don't make threats (demands) like this, but I find it so tiresome to write a story and then not get any feedback.

I'll beg on my knees to get one single review! Please?!

Voice 1: Well, there you go, she's gone mad.

Voice 2: Of course not, she's just wanting reviews. I think that's entirely okay.

Voice 3: Hah!

Voice 1: Nope, she's mad. Look at what she's written and you'll see… Tom Riddle my @$$!

Me: Hey! Either you will all shut up or I will do something very drastic like kill you. *** **Grumbles *

Voice 3: Hah!

Voice 1: You can't kill us, because we are a part of you! So there!

Me: * Grumbles * All right, but shut up!

Voice 3: Hah!


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